VCF 5.2, vSphere 8.0 U3, vSAN 8.0 U3, NSX 4.2 Release Round Up

VMware by Broadcom has announced the release of various versions of its VCF range. As there is a lot of new stuff, I thought I would give you a quick overview of my release highlights.

VCF 5.2

VCF 5.2 introduces the ability to import existing brownfield vSphere and vSAN environments to benefit from the centralised lifecycle management of VCF. NSX-enabled environments cannot yet be imported, but this is expected in a future release.

 

vSphere 8.0 U3

First great to mention feature is the “Partial Maintenance Mode” to introduce live patching, without host evacuation. This applies likely for Security patches, while Major releases still require the traditional maintenance mode.

 

Secondly vCLS runs more efficient than before as it needs 2 instead of 3 VMs and it doesn’t require a datastore to run.

  

At third managing ciphers on ESXI hosts is simplified.

 

NSX 4.2

NSX 4.2 improves its Enhanced Datapath mode significantly vs. Standard Datapath.

 

Simultaneous connection for Tunnel endpoints between ESXi Hosts and Edges increases the performance significantly.

 

vSAN 8.0 U3

vSAN 8.0 U3 introduces advanced Data Protection mechanics to meet protection requirements. vSAN Data Protection uses snapshots and is ideal for simple local recovery scenarios and data manipulation activities. It uses vSAN ESA’s snapshot engine to create point-in-time with retention lock mechanics. It is limited to a local vSAN datastore.